Opening night was a long time ago but I remember it well. I had
come down with something that attacked my throat and so I was quite
worried about whether I would have enough voice. I got a lot of
help from Jan Haydn-Rowles [voice coach], I tried to focus on
sensible living; having honey and lemon, shutting up during the
day, saving my voice and trying not to let it get on top of me
mentally. I managed to get through opening night with enough voice.
I had some very special friends in the audience: my wife, one of
our daughters and three friends from Germany were all there and it
went really well. It was great being backstage beforehand, there is
a special feeling there. Everyone is hanging around the little
monitor watching it, then it comes to the fight and that’s when
it’s getting close to my part, I have to walk around outside for my
entrance. Opening night was a real buzz.

Warm ups and pre-show rituals

I do lots of stretches. Also, I asked the young actors “Do you
mind if I warm up with you?” just to learn some new exercises.
Definitely vocal exercises too – finding “that note” as Jan puts it
– spending time on the stage before the audience get, just general
actor warm-ups. I also established a little ritual which I’ve kept
all the way through. I’ve got lots of drawings from my
grandchildren which arrived a few days before opening night, so I
put those all up around my place in the dressing room. One of them
is my grandson’s handprints, so each night before I go out there I
touch his hands. Then before I go into the yard, just outside in
the courtyard I stand on Sam Wanamaker’s brick, on the pavement, I
just stand there and just go “Come on old fella, help me out here!”
That was the ritual that I set for myself on that first night, as
well as the ongoing ritual of doing warm-ups with all the
others.

Preview Week

For me, quite a bit changed in the first week. I still hadn’t
got on top of the lines and I wasn’t as at home as I would have
liked to have been. I was not really ‘game fit’ as a stage
performer, so I lost my way quite a few times and hit the panic
button. That week was fantastic to find my feet and get used to
cues. Also, Dominic [Dromgoole, director] watched all those first
shows and several into the run as well and did some work with us
to try to tighten up the entrances and cues. We were getting notes
every day from him, which were fantastic.

I am pretty hard on myself; I think all actors are. You’re aiming
for the perfect, error-free performance. In the first few
performances I would actually mark the mistakes, in terms of slips
with lines. For example, sometimes I said the wrong word, or missed
a word, or stumbled, and I was making between ten and twenty
mistakes per show. By the time we got through the previews I had
got that down to under five. No one else noticed, but I was still
searching for an error-free round, that didn’t come until about two
weeks into it.

Press Night

There were lots of nerves backstage and lots of excitement!
That’s the true opening night! There is also the exchanging of
gifts. Because I’m playing the Friar I had got little cards with
St. Francis’ prayer which I was able to leave on people’s places. I
tried to thank everybody who had been involved in the show, not
only the people on stage but people in the office as well. I
received lots of beautiful stuff from the cast and others as well,
it’s a wonderful thing, there was just such an outpouring of love
and support – its how the world should be! Press night was great, I
had more really close friends watching and it is always special
when there are people there. It is so different to New Zealand: the
press arrive on the first night there because the runs are so
short, so you need to get the press out as soon as possible. So it
is a luxurious thing to have such a long run and to be able to have
ten preview shows. By then the show was in really good shape, I was
feeling really confident and my voice was strong. I’d set myself a
pretty strenuous physical regime, I dropped from 101kg to 88kg for
the show. By the time we got to press night I was feeling fit, my
voice was great and I was match fit. I was happy with my own
contribution to a fantastic show.

Reviews

I don’t read reviews. I got into that habit a long time ago. As
a young actor, I was playing Edgar in King Lear and I’d
worked very hard and I was incredibly proud of it. In Auckland at
that time there were only two papers– the morning paper and the
afternoon paper - and both of them slated me. They pulled me out in
particular and were really harsh: it absolutely destroyed me. That
was my second year in the theatre; it depressed me and then
affected my performance so I decided then that I was just not going
to read reviews again.
I am aware that the reviews for this show were mixed, although I
haven’t read any. By accident I picked up a free paper on a train,
I read a review and it was particularly cruel about Ellie
[Kendrick, Juliet] and Adetomiwa [Edun, Romeo] and it was
completely in opposition to what I felt. The same old thing
happened to me – it really affected me and I wanted to be
protective of these two young actors and let them know they
shouldn’t believe it!

As an old actor looking at their work, it is such a pleasure to
work with them and Ellie has pulled out a magnificent Juliet, a
Juliet that will be looked back in time as one of the greats. I
absolutely believe that. Similarly for Adetomiwa. The two of them
are going to go off and become exceptionally well known and
beautifully appreciated. So I felt deeply concerned for them.
But then a few days later I read the posters. The publicity
department pulls out the best reviews and there were some shining
reviews for both Adetomiwa and Ellie, so I thought “Well that’s ok,
there is a balance there” and they’re doing fine. My children went
on the internet back in New Zealand and they emailed me to say that
I had been mentioned in some good reviews, which is nice, but I’m
not going to let that affect me either. So you miss out on the nice
stuff too!

Audience

It is glorious finally being on that stage in front of an
audience! The audience is the final piece, the essential piece;
without that it isn’t theatre. You can work for years if you like
but it’s not going to become a piece of theatre until you share it
with an audience. So the most special time for a production, I
believe, is starting to feel the audience’s contribution. The
audiences here are just so different. They are there because they
want to be there, they want to be in this particular theatre and
that is so obvious by the way that they respond.

Direct Address

My entire first scene is direct conversation with the audience
and I actually touch them as I walk through and look them in the
eye as I pass by them. I speak in mock Italian and mock Latin. I
use a line that I said as Tranio in The Taming of the
Shrew, “Mi perdonato, gentle master mine” which simply means
“Pardon me, my master.” So I’ve just stolen another little bit of
Shakespeare there. I also bless people as they look at me, I use
“Benedicite” from the first scene and “Blessed be upon you” from
the tomb scene. It is a glorious entrance that Dominic has given
me, I’ve got a heavenly choir and then I address the audience as I
start. It is a beautiful entrance so if you muck that up you’re not
really worth much! Then I am able to look at people and address the
entire audience, I take my time through that. I literally work my
way down from the top gallery, through the middle gallery and down
to the yard. I offer a flower, usually to a girl, or a woman;
occasionally there aren’t any there, but I prefer to because the
line works better with a girl. So I have that direct touch, and it
is a glorious way to start to feel at home.

Time

There was a period around about show number fifty where I
started getting worried that I was on automatic. Actually the whole
company started to feel that. Also, the show has got a little bit
longer in the first half, so we were wondering what had happened.
The fastest our first half has been is 1 hour 35 and slowest 1 hour
42, at the moment we are running consistently at 1 hour 41. We all
listen intently when we’re given the times, we stop in the dressing
rooms because we’re all trying to get it. I reckon that a good
three minutes of that extra five minutes is the audience’s
contribution, so I’ve stopped worrying about it.

There is a little moment in the first scene with Romeo where I do a
little look to the audience and it gets a delicious laugh; I’m
loathed to let it go, but I may have to for time. I timed it for
myself at home and I worked out that it added about six to eight
seconds. There are sixteen of us onstage and that is just one of my
moments, so multiply that by sixteen, that’s getting up there for a
few minutes, if we’ve all got those moments and lots of us have got
many of them. Fergal [McElherron, Peter] is wonderful at comedy and
the audiences adore him, he has got so many of those moments, so
what do we do? We’re not going to take all of those out, because
we’ve worked hard at earning them. The only reason for us to take
them out is if they are detracting from the lines, or if we’re
milking it for no reason.

Performing

This is the longest run that I’ve ever had for a show; in total
so far we’ve probably performed to more than a hundred thousand
people! I’m being recognised all around London, not for
Whalerider (which I had been anyway), and not by New
Zealanders who know me from various television things, but by
people who have seen me in Romeo and Juliet! I am easily
recognisable because I don’t wear any makeup or look different
onstage, I look like me onstage. And I love that!

The Company

We are near the end of the run now. This company has just melded
so well. Penny [Layden, Nurse] was saying that she had never been
in a company where there was so much love for each other. We all
enjoy each other’s company, we enjoy working with each other
onstage, we make each other laugh – it’s just a great company. It
is going to be a really sad, tearful last night and we’re already
gearing up for it. I’ve made some beautiful friends. Ian Redford
[Capulet] who is a wonderful actor and a lovely guy, has become a
friend that I’m going to have for the rest of my life. I’m going to
enjoy watching all of these young actors’ careers bloom. Ukweli
[Roach, Tybalt] is off to do a film after this and I wouldn’t be
surprised if that is the beginning of the path to film stardom for
him. Philip Cumbus [Mercutio] is probably one of the most
intelligent young actors I’ve ever worked with and he is a
gentleman as well as a ridiculously good-humoured young man.
Adetomiwa [Edun, Romeo] is just such good fun, I really enjoy
sitting down after a show every now and then and sharing a glass of
wine with them and enjoying their company.

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the
part as s / he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply
his / her own interpretations and frequently change as the
rehearsals progress.

In this theatre, it’s really, really different to a usual tech
week because we don’t have lights and recorded sound. You would
imagine that would speed the process up, but at the Globe, the
technical is about us getting used to the space and costumes, as
it’s the first time all of us are in the space.

The choreographer and the voice, movement and text coaches are
all watching the rehearsals onstage and giving feedback, mostly
through Dominic [Dromgoole, director]. So, for example, I would
start to play with my voice, and Jan [Haydn Rowles, voice] came
back to me really excited, saying “I don’t know what you’re doing,
but you’re exactly on your optimum note. Whatever you’re doing,
keep doing it!” Of course, the next time I went out, I totally lost
it because I started thinking about it!

Working with the other actors

A lot of the things that we’d worked in rehearsals didn’t work
quite as we thought once we were up on stage. One of the fantastic
discoveries I made was in my first scene with Romeo; we were asked
to experiment with the space and Dominic said, “Try being further
apart from each other.” By being further apart on that stage,
strangely it became more intimate and we were able to listen to
each other better. It’s an absolute delight to work with Adetomiwa
[Edun, Romeo] because it keeps me on my toes. It’s like playing on
the centre court against Rafael Nadal – he’s incredibly fit,
physical and mentally agile, a young man in his prime. There’s
nothing better than working with somebody like that – he’s a
beautiful listener and I’m learning a great deal from him about
actively listening on stage. He’s absolutely in the moment.

Working with Ellie [Kendrick, Juliet] is incredible as well. I
don’t have so much to do with her but eye contact with that girl is
quite amazing. She fixes your eye. And there are times when the
friar avoids people’s eyes, but it’s very difficult to avoid
hers.

Watching the rest of the play

I wasn’t called for the first two and a half days of the
technical rehearsals, so it was wonderful for me to be able to
watch the show, I positioned myself in different parts of the
theatre. My favourite place – and it probably isn’t the favourite
with anyone else – is in the Lords’ and Ladies’ seats right around
on the sides of the Middle Gallery, as it reminds me of the view
from the wings. As a young actor, I had a lot of lead roles so I
was on stage a lot, but when I was off stage, I loved watching the
other actors from the wings. I’ve always maintained that those are
the best seats in the house.

So I watched the fight scenes being rehearsed, sitting right up
at the top and it was like a ballet. Ukweli [Roach, Tybalt] is a
dancer, but Adetomiwa [Edun, Romeo] and Philip [Cumbus, Mercutio]
were brilliant. The fighting was really brutal but also beautiful.
The most exciting thing about the technical is we’re allowed to
watch the other actors and that’s always the best way to learn. Ian
[Redford, Capulet] is delightful to watch in that space, he is very
comfortable with his voice and his movement.

It also gave me an opportunity to watch Fergal McElherron
[Balthazar/Peter] who is one of the funniest, most naturally gifted
comic actors you will ever see. He works hard and he’s not playing
for the laugh, he’s playing for the cause. I was also able to watch
the onstage relationships between him, Graham [Vick, Apothecary]
and James [Lailey, Sampson] who act together. They are favourites
with the audience because they provide increasingly-needed light
relief. Straight after the pretend death of Juliet, on come the
musicians and they are bizarrely funny. It’s straight after a scene
where I see the audience crying every night. I’m the only character
who knows it’s not real and even though the audience knows too,
they still cry because of the work of Penny [Layden, the Nurse] and
Miranda [Foster, Lady Capulet] – their reactions in that scene are
gut-wrenching.

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the
part as he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his
own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals
progress.

It’s been lovely to explore the character more. As I mentioned
before, one of the most important notes that I've had from Dominic
[Dromgoole, director] was not to play the Friar old, but to play
him at least my age, and preferably five or even ten years younger.
That was a real joy because recently I’ve been cast a lot in roles
that are older than myself and so that has been really liberating.
The more we’ve worked on the Friar’s character, the more concrete
it’s become. For example, when we worked on the Friar John scene,
where he reveals he hasn’t delivered the letter, Dominic asked me
what I felt like doing in that moment. I told him that I wanted to
punch him, to which Dominic said, “Well, grab him! Go to punch him
and then pull back.” The Friar is grappling with those emotions. I
had already thought that Friar Laurence was someone who doesn’t
necessarily sit comfortably being a Friar – he is still trying to
work a lot of stuff out. When the letter comes back to him, all of
his plans are gone and he is a step away from falling back to his
old ways.

Creating a back story for the Friar

I absolutely make up a back story. I modelled the Friar on St
Francis’ life, which the research department got me some wonderful
information on; the story of St Francis is superb. He was the son
of a merchant who lived the life of a wealthy young lad: he was
very well educated; he was a womaniser; he was a drinker; he got
into scraps. Then he realised that this wasn’t fulfilling, so he
became someone who wanted to be at one with nature and with God.
All of this rang a lot of bells as I started working with the
character of Friar Laurence. So rehearsals have been about me
playing the Friar as someone who is continually fighting his
instinctive reactions. The Friar is working through a lot of past
issues; for example, in the banishment scene with Romeo, there are
times there when I just want to shake him and say, “Look, you
spoilt little brat…!”, because when I look at Romeo, Friar Laurence
is looking in a mirror and seeing his own unforgivable behaviour.
He grapples with his past and grapples with his habits. I think
that is why he’s clearly very popular with young people. The best
teachers and counsellors are the ones who have lived a bit and gone
through it all themselves, so they have an understanding.

Relationship with Romeo: the final scene

There is a deep love in the Friar for Romeo; he loves him like a
son. In the last scene of the play, the Friar has confessed,
claimed responsibility and told the truth, but as a result, he has
lost everything. Montague arrives and claims the grieving for his
son, but there was a part of me in rehearsals that was annoyed with
Montague for that, because he hasn’t been a good father to Romeo;
I’ve been that father-figure. So in our production, it becomes
quite a beautiful moment, because Montague shows a very superficial
grief towards his son’s death, compared to the genuine grief of the
Friar.

Language

I think I’ve always been a pretty physical actor anyway,
particularly when I was a younger actor, and you don’t lose that.
In the text of the Friar there’s some pretty robust physical
language as well. The Friar resorts to swearing a lot : ‘Holy Saint
Francis!’; ‘By my holy order!’; ‘By my brotherhood!’; ‘God’s
will!’. A person who swears a lot is withholding his physicality;
maybe this is the language of someone who will resort to physical
violence. It’s just a theory but a lot of the clues to the
physicality of the Friar come exactly from the text; Shakespeare
uses robust language.

Crisis point in rehearsals

I had a crisis point this week when we did the first full run
through. In a funny way, the audience that makes you feel the most
nervous is your fellow cast members. I don’t know what went on, but
for some reason, everything that I had worked on with the other
actors and with Dominic [Dromgoole, director] went out the window.
I came on and I was full of bluster, I was slow – really, really,
painfully slow – and I knew that I’d blown it. One of the excuses
that I offer for myself is that the Friar doesn’t come on for a
long time. I was watching all this fine work from the other actors
going on before me and I started to lose confidence in myself, so
that by the time I got on I was this booming, tediously slow Friar,
which had nothing to do with what we had worked on. Afterwards,
Dominic pulled me aside and expressed everything that I had known I
was doing wrong. I left that rehearsal in an absolute mess! I
didn’t sleep very well that night; I was really frightened that I
had lost my way and I lived in fear of the next run. When we got to
the next run, I was still really nervous, but the two key things
that I had taken away from all of the good work in rehearsals were
to speed him up and to stop shouting. Thankfully, it was much
improved! Dominic came up to me afterwards to say, “We still have a
long way to go with him, but he’s on his way back – thank you very
much”. I think Dominic was worried because he’d never worked with
me before and I come from a different theatre culture than anyone
else here, so he wasn’t sure whether he was going to be able to
bring me back from this stumble. But Dominic is a very clear
communicator and that’s exactly what I needed. He told me that I’d
lost the plot, which is what I had suspected, and I needed to know
that. As an actor you analyse it all the time. I get so nervous and
quite often I boom and everything comes out really, really slow.
But the positive side is that it happened in the rehearsal room in
a safe environment; we weren’t even on the stage yet, and so the
director and I were able to grab it. I’ve got it out of my
system!

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the
part as he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his
own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals
progress.

We’re at a stage where we’ve done the table work, we’ve blocked
stuff roughly and now we’re getting to the meat of the scene. I
really enjoy that stage. So the books are down. It is always good
to get rid of them and start opening out.

Some time last week, although Dominic [Dromgoole, director] was
generally pleased, he was worried I was “a little bit book-bound.”
He realised I was here by myself and so arranged for somebody to
help me with learning lines. So for at least three of the last five
days I’ve sat down with Lotte [Wakeman, text assistant] and
basically she has gone through the lines with me and they’re
getting stronger and stronger. It’s a wonderful support system; I’m
feeling very positive being in this environment. Here at the Globe,
there are support systems that I believe should be part of every
production company. It’s amazing to have a director say: “You’re a
little bit book-bound – do you want some help?” rather than see me
struggle. I would have battled away and come through it, but I’m
not stupid – if the help is there, I’ll take it! It is so much
easier learning lines with someone saying lines back to you. So
that has been a huge thing, I feel very well supported.

One of the best things that happened for the company was the big
party on Saturday. Most of us got together on a social level. It’s
really nice to feel that I’m part of a company that gets on well
together. I think that comes right from the top; when you come into
these buildings, you’re part of it. It’s just great.

Act 5 Scene 3: The Friar’s Last Speech

In a recent voice session with Jan [Haydn-Rowles, voice coach],
we worked on the Friar’s long speech in the final scene. The speech
involves me retelling almost everything that’s happened in the
play:

• that Romeo was married to Juliet illegally by me on the day
that Tybalt was killed by Romeo;
• that Juliet was crying for the banished Romeo, not Tybalt;
• that when her parents wanted to marry her to Paris, she came to
me and had madness in her eyes, threatening to kill herself unless
I came up with a plan;
• that I gave her these drugs and they made her look like she was
dead, and she is buried alive in a tomb;
• that in the meantime I sent a letter to tell Romeo, but the friar
with my letter gets held up.

It’s a difficult speech, because even though everything I am
saying is new to the other characters on stage, the audience has
seen all this. So it can’t be a speech that just recounts – that
would be pointless. There has to be some freshness.

Working on that scene with Jan yesterday, we had a
break-through, which felt really good. She doesn’t work on advice
or telling you what to do, but is very practical – things that
actually have nothing to do with voice, but more to do with the
text. She gives me exercises to work through and then she sits me
down and says, “So how does that make you feel?” It is an
intriguing way of working and it gives a sense of immediacy, which
is great. For example, with the speech right at the end, she got me
to work through moments when I can speak quite boldly and moments
of delivering news to everyone onstage, already known to the
audience. Dominic was very happy and gave some more stuff to add on
to that work. He wants me to keep my focus in the speech within a
quadrant – Capulet, Montague, the Prince and the lovers’ bodies.
When I keep it within them, within that space, it helps it become
immediate.

Movement

This week in a session with Glynn [MacDonald, movement] we used
the Alexander technique, which is about focusing on the body and
letting it do its natural movement and position. There is a lot
going on in my life at the moment, but it wasn’t until I went to
Glynn this morning that I let go. The session was just so freeing,
particularly for my neck and back and to open me out.

Also, Glynn has a real empathy with the character of Friar
Lawrence; she was talking about Easter week coming up and why the
saints and the friars are painted with halos: because they bring
the light. This is exactly what I’ve been working at for the Friar
in his first scene (Act 2, Scene 2) I want him to bring with him
that sense of light. So after using the Alexander technique and
having that discussion, I was feeling about six inches taller, I
felt lighter, I was breathing cleaner and deeper; it’s magic stuff.
After talking with Glynn, I am planning to go to the Easter service
at Southwark Cathedral, which is just along the river from the
Globe. I have visited there before to see the tomb of the poet
Gower, the character that I played in Pericles, so I have a link
with that cathedral already.

More Research

I think actors and theatre-people are researchers by nature, and
research has always been an incredibly important part of my
process. So to have an on-site research team headed up by Dr Farah
[Karim-Cooper, Globe Lecturer and Head of Courses & Research]
is wonderful. For example, I came into the library and said I
wanted to find out about herbs … and the books were there the next
day!

I was also able to follow up an appointment with a herb-expert
too. I went to the operating museum in London where they have herb
gardens that would have been used in medicine, which was a huge
help! I met this woman who was a herbal expert; I was at the stage
of wanting to get some information about what it is that I give to
Juliet, what this amazing drug is, and she was able to steer me
towards suitable books. So I feel very happy about that.

I also wanted to know about the politics of the time, because
the Capulets and the Montagues are at war, and war is politics. One
of the research interns found an interesting article about the
Prince and the Friar and the political roles that they play. I had
an inkling that the Friar wants to deal with the politics of the
play. All of this research gives you a firmer ground from which to
operate, even if you’re not going to get that research across on
stage. It’s great being in a place that has that capacity.

I also went to a lecture here with Adetomiwa [Edun, Romeo] and
Ellie [Kendrick, Juliet] and it was fantastic. In the lecture, one
of the things I learned was that the father figure would often be
kissed in the morning by the son, either on the cheek or the hand
to receive the blessing of the father-figure. Clearly in Romeo’s
life I am far more of a father figure to him than Montague is. So I
took this piece of information to the rehearsal and Dominic grabbed
it straight away. We had a short discussion about whether it should
be the hand, but Dominic thought the hand was too regal, so we’ve
now got this lovely moment when Romeo comes in during my first
scene, interrupts me and kisses me on the cheek. That decision was
a direct result of attending that lecture, a reflection of the way
that this whole place operates – everything feeds into everything
else.

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the
part as he goes through the rehearsal process - they are simply his
own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals
progress.

After having spent the first week doing table sessions and
figuring out the language, we have now started standing up,
starting to move and letting the play breathe and come to life. So
we figure out where I enter from, where I exit, at what points I
move and where I move to, if there’s any point I stand still, and
so on. We try lots of different things. Yesterday, for example, I
did the scene with Adetomiwa [Edun, playing Romeo] where Romeo
comes to the Friar after he has been banished. I remember when I
played Romeo as a young man, and it was my favourite scene then;
Romeo gets a chance to be a spoilt brat (and really inside all of
us, we want the opportunity to be spoilt brats), but the power of
the words of the Friar bring him back from that heavy
“ban-ish-éd”.

I’ve also noticed Dominic [Dromgoole, the director] gives very
subtle notes, but that when I execute that note, it actually makes
a huge difference. I was standing a certain way the other day
during my first speech, and Dominic told me to change my posture;
I’ve played quite a few older characters, so maybe I’ve got into
the habit of standing a certain way, but when I did move
differently, it made the whole speech much lighter and younger,
which is what we are hoping ot achieve.

Movement

When Dominic has been working on scenes that I’m not in, I’ve
been having some great classes with the experts at the Globe. One
of those was a group session with Glynn [McDonald, the movement
expert]. She talked about how there are four main archetypes of
movement which characters tend to adopt: the king; the warrior; the
magician; and the lover. Each has a different posture and type of
movement associated with them, and that can bring out different
characteristics. So the king, for example, represents authority and
should be in control all the time, but he must always feel the
weight of the crown pressing down on his head.

The Friar obviously isn’t a king, and he’s not a warrior or the
lover – he’s a magician. However, when I started working with Glynn
on the archetypal magician, his movement was all very, very quick
and it felt very young. As I said before, I’m not thinking of the
Friar as ancient, but I do think he’s closer to my age and so isn’t
a young magician – this felt too energetic and a little chaotic. So
I asked if it was possible for the magician to be older, and Glynn
told me that all of these archetypes evolve and the magician
evolves into a wizard. That’s as far as I am with that at the
moment so I’m waiting to explore it further and share that journey
with Glynn.

Voice Work

The other class I am about to have at the end of the week is
with the voice coach, Jan [Haydn Rowles]. I’ve not had much success
with voice teachers in the past; it might be that I haven’t
understood them and what they were doing, or maybe I didn’t put in
the work. But I’ve worked with Jan before, when I was here for the
International Fellowship, and I think she’s fantastic – we have a
very fun relationship. And training your voice specifically for the
Globe is so important; it’s such a different space from anywhere
else, not only because you are outside and there are planes flying
overhead, but it requires something else of you as an actor. I’ve
got a pretty big voice anyway, so I’ve been told that I can get
away with more than a lot of other people as I have quite a lot of
natural support behind my voice, but I feel I’m at the level now
where I want to do more than the basics. So we’ll see how that
turns out on Friday!

Dancing: The Jig

Every show at the Globe has a jig at the end, and I think it’s
such a grand idea; it’s based entirely in history and would have
happened in Shakespeare’s day, and I think it’s a fantastic thing
to do, particularly at the end of a tragedy. That might seem
strange, but there are three dead bodies on the ground – Paris,
Romeo and Juliet – so it’s a gloomy piece, a grim picture that is
painted at the end of the play. And then there is silence for a
moment before the jig. I think it is a wonderful way to say, “OK,
that our play, the “two hours traffic of the stage”. It’s over,
let’s have a dance!”

I love dancing and I love being physical, and I’ve done a lot of
musical theatre as a younger actor, having big dancing roles in
shows like Cabaret. But even when I was doing that, I didn’t learn
things immediately as I’m not a natural dancer. And the rest of the
company have had many more dance sessions because they’re all in
the masked ball, whereas I haven’t really been doing any because
obviously the Friar isn’t in that scene. So I feel I’m maybe
struggling a little, but I’ll get there!

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the
part as he goes through the rehearsal process - they are simply his
own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals
progress.

Dominic [Dromgoole, artistic director]’s process is that he
starts in the first week with table sessions, where he insists that
we need to understand every single word that we’re saying and
that’s being said to us. So we sit around the table and we go
through every word of the scene that we are in. To be fair, I was
really struggling to begin with, so I bought the glossary
Shakespeare’s Words, by David Crystal and the Oxford text of
Romeo and Juliet, which had better notes than my edition.
I made it a routine where I would translate the scenes word-by-word
literally, so that I was able to start turning up the most prepared
…. much to Dominic’s enjoyment!

I’m an actor and feel like I need to get a scene up and get it
moving, but I know that this process feeds into that next stage, so
we’ll be able to get it moving now. I can’t wait for that next
week!

Research at the Globe

Working at the Globe, you have access to the Globe research
team. So we had an initial lecture from Dr Farah Karim-Cooper,
which was exceptional, about how the Friar marrying Romeo and
Juliet without her father there would have been thought of as
illegal. At that lecture, she also introduced us to the research
team and to where the Library and Archive was. So I went there and
knocked on their door the day after with lots of questions, and
they have already dug up lots of stuff about herbs and Franciscans
and lots more. I wanted to know all kinds of things and they came
up with the answers. It’s a great system.

Text work with Giles Block

Alongside the table sessions, we also had a class with the Globe
textual adviser, Giles Block. Giles’ process deals with splitting
the speeches up into thoughts, and then we would look at the
meaning. I love the way Giles works because he never says, “It
means this”. He throws possibilities at you and invites you to find
the meaning that works best for you. He will debate it with you, if
need be, but he provides you with all kinds of possibilities.

He’s also great at asking questions about why the language is
the way it is. So for example, in the Friar’s first scene, it’s the
only scene where he speaks entirely in rhyming couplets:

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

2.3.1-26

And Giles, of course, asked me the burning question: “Why? Why
is he speaking in rhyming couplets?”. There are lots of reasons why
Shakespeare used rhyming verse. It sets up a playful relationship
between Romeo and Friar. It’s also a way of putting across received
information as it organises your thoughts as you speak into
sections. It demands of you a kind of a rhythm; and not just a
rhythm within yourself, but a rhythm between you and the other
actor. Sometimes Romeo and I share lines, sometimes we share
couplets, which makes it playful and light. It also displays that
the Friar has got a wit. It’s a lovely scene.

These
comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the part as he
goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his own
interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals
progress.

My first introduction to Shakespeare wasn’t that pleasant.
Shakespeare was compulsory when I was going to secondary school and
the first play I studied was Julius Caesar; we didn’t even
read the play, but were just given notes about the scenes.

But then in my later years, I luckily got a great teacher who
took us to a professional production of Hamlet in a
theatre called the Mercury Theatre in Auckland, and that experience
changed the shape of my life. I wasn’t really expecting anything
and had never been in a ‘proper theatre’ as it were. But when the
lights went down on the battlements and the mist came and that
first scene happened, I was absolutely transfixed from then right
through. The language wasn’t a problem at all because I understood
what it was about. I was a young man growing up at a time when
there were a lot of things corrupt in the state of the world, the
Vietnam War for example, and the elders of the world didn’t seem
all that together. And so when I watched this play, I identified
with it and with Hamlet and it sang to me.

And I made my mind up there and then that I wanted to be a
writer, rather than an actor. The little that I knew about
Shakespeare was that he was long dead but I realised the power of
live theatre and of the words; if a man could write something four
hundred years ago and it could still be that essential to me in a
completely different culture, in a completely different
environment, in a completely different time, that’s a powerful
thing. I was a person who was very political as a young man and so
I saw this as the vehicle to get the things that I wanted to say
across.

I decided that the best way to learn how to be a playwright was
to be an actor first. I knew that I was OK at performance – I was
the class clown – so I finished off school and then did one-year
acting course in Wellington, before the director at the Mercury
theatre where I had seen Hamlet took me on for a two-year
apprenticeship. I stayed about four years at that theatre.

Preparation before rehearsals

Because my schedule has been so busy, I didn’t actually get as
much time as I would like to do my research. However, I did a
little bit of background work on St Francis and I found out that he
came from a wealthy family and that he liked girls and alcohol and
the good life and was a bit of a lad really before he saw the
light! Although the order of monks he established was very strict,
I also discovered that it was an order about community, and about
the human relationship with the earth and other creatures. This has
a lot to do with my own Maori culture anyway, so at that point I
knew then that it was a role that I was going to be able to find
lots to identify with.

Initial impressions of the Friar

I think people often tend to think of the Friar as an old man,
but Dominic [Dromgoole, the director] is keen to move away from
those associations, that the Friar is my age and maybe even five
years younger. His first speech, for example, “This grey-eyed morn
smiles on the frowning night” (2.3.1) is very light, and I’m
starting to think there is a lightness to the Friar; I’m
consciously trying to lighten my posture and the frame of mind of
the character, which feeds into the fact that the Friar is
incredible positive. If I’m a Franciscan friar, my first duty is to
do good for the community, and what is ailing in this community is
the rancour between the two household. When Romeo, this hopeless
case, falls for the daughter of his father’s enemy, the Friar sees
the good in it, and so he agrees to do this illegal act, this
concealed marriage without parental permission, in the hope that it
will unite the two families.

And even when things keep going wrong – Romeo killing Tybalt and
then being banished – the Friar has always got a plan. They are
dreadful plans with high risks and low returns, but he has always
able to put a positive slant on it and he can always see some way
through, because what is on his heart is trying to heal the two
households.

First day of rehearsals

The first day is the meet and greet. We go into the top
rehearsal room and everyone is there from all parts of the theatre.
You get some information on some sheets, and some photographs of
the entire cast, and then people stand up and introduce themselves
from all departments of the Globe. We’re going to be rehearsing for
the first two weeks in a different building, part of the old
Meniers Chocolate Factory. Once there, we talked about the process
of what is going to happen with Romeo and Juliet. Dominic
did his introduction about his process and about his take on the
play, and we saw a miniature model of the stage with the set design
and the costume designer’s drawings. And then we did a read through
of the entire play. So it was all very introductory.

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the
part as he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his
own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals
progress.